This document contains summaries of passages from Ulysses by James Joyce. The summaries are in 3 sentences or less and provide the key context and meaning from each excerpt, including references to characters, locations, myths, and literary works mentioned. There are over 40 summaries included.

1. Scylla and Charybdis

2. “Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always
feels that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.”
(U9.9)
This paraphrases Wilhelm Meister’s
remarks about Hamlet. But is is
also a remark about Wilhelm
Meister himself, since Goethe
regards Meister’s flirtation with the
theater as placing hi in danger of
becoming “a beautiful ineffectual
dreamer” instead of the active
moralist he is destined to become.

3. “-Monsieur de la Palisse, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes
before his death.” (U9.16)
A famous example of ridiculous
statement of obvious truth,
attributed to the soldiers of the
French Marechal de la Palisse,
who died after a heroic effort in a
losing cause at the battle of Pavia
in 1525.

4. “First he tickled her
Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter
For he was a medical
Jolly old medi…
- I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the mystic
mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.” (U9.22)
In Hebrew, Greek, Egyptian, and Eastern
traditions, seven was regarded as the
embodiment of perfection and unity,
mystically appropriate to sacred things.
Seven “was also used by early Christian
writers as the number of completion and
perfection.”

5. "The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life
does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of
ideas." (U9:49)
Out of how deep a life does it spring -
After the romantic assumption that the
artist is greater in soul than other men
and that the greatness of a work of art is
in direct proportion to the greatness of
the artist’s soul.

6. "The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas." (U9.50)
Gustave Moreau – A French painter
noted for his romantic and symbolic
style. His weird, exotic renderings of
biblical and classical myths were
admired by the avant-garde of his
time, and as a “literary” painter he
had considerable influence on
French symbolist poets.

7. "The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our
minds into contact with the eternal wisdom," (U9.51)
Shelley was widely regarded in the
late nineteenth century as the ideal
poet of metaphysical, “intellectual”
beauty, capable of that
Neoplatonic vision that penetrates
the “veil” of the sensuous world to
apprehend the spiritual truth
beyond.

8. "Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from
virgin Dublin." (U9.149)
The literal sense of the passage: it took as long to travel from Stratford to
London in Elizabethan times as it took to travel from Dublin to Paris in
the early twentieth century. Pictured is the Memorial Theater erected in
1879 to honor the great poet and dramatist William Shakespeare. The
building comprised a theater, library, picture gallery and a large central
tower. It was destroyed by a fire in 1926.

9. "- She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She
saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She
bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids
closed when he lay on his deathbed." (U9.217)
Anne Hathaway was
born in 1556 and died
on August 6th, 1623.

10. "- But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem
to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remin, to chide
the not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though
maligned.” (U9.240)
Thomas Lyster, who, as a Quaker, is a
“lollard” and was subject to public
suspicion about his loyalties because
he was not a Roman Catholic.

11. "- He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.
He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling
The girl I left behind me." (U9.245)
He carried a memory in his wallet –
Recalls Ulysses’ assertion in
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida that
memories quickly fake: “Time hath my
lord, a wallet at his back, / Wherein he
puts alms for oblivion.”

12. "Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks from
hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he
won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully
tapsters' wives. Fox and geese." (U9.337)
This passage conjoins the
careers of Shakespeare and
George Fox. Christfox: from
the Quaker assertion that
Christ is present as an “inner
light” in the heart and thus is
a subtle “fox;” also because
George Fox was hunted and
hounded.

13. "And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once
as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted
of the narrow grave and unforgiven." (U9.340)
“New Place” was the
mature Shakespeare’s
residence in Stratford-
on-Avon.

14. "- As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen
said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the
artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right
breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been
woven of new stuff time after time," (U9.376)
Mother Dana – The triple
goddess of Celtic mythology,
regarded as the mother of
earth, fertility, and plenty and
of the forces of youth, light,
and knowledge and of the
forces of disintegration and
death.

15. "- If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in
the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired so
much breathe another spirit.
- The spirit of reconciliation, the Quaker librarian breathed." (U9.393)
Ernest Renan (1823-92), a French critic, writer,
and scholar famous for the “Protean
inconsistency” of his scepticism and theories.
Renan admired Shakespeare’s late plays as
“mature philosophical dramas” and undertook
in one of his own Drames philosophiques to
write a sequel to The Tempest, called “Caliban.”

16. "- The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L'art d'Etre
grandp..." (U10.425)
Mr. Best begins to say grandpere, which is
French for grandfather, but left
incomplete the phrase means “the art of
being great.” L’art d’etre grandpere is the
title of a book of poems for children by
the French poet and novelist Victor Hugo.

17. "If the shrew is worsted yet there remains to her woman's invisible
weapon. There is, I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving
him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening even
his own understanding of himself. A like fate awaits him and the two
rages commingle in a whirlpool." (U9.460)
Woman’s invisible
weapon – Woman’s
visible weapon is, as
Lear remarks,
“waterdrops,” tears. The
implication is that
woman uses her
sexuality (invisible) to
seduce and (secretly)
betray her husband or
lover.

18. "to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back,
weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old
dog licking an old sore." (U9.474)
Imogen, the daughter of Cymbeline
and the chaste heroine of
Shakespeare’s play, is visually, though
not physically, violated by the villain,
Iachimo, as she sleeps.

19. “- The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.
He jumped up and snatched the card.
- What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.
He rattled on:
- Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
museum when I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth
that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to
her. Life of life, thy lips enkindle." (U9.602)
Ikey Moses – A late-nineteenth century comic
type of the Jew who tries to ingratiate himself in
middle-class Gentile society. In Ally Sloper’s
Half-Holiday, a London illustrated weekly, a
character named Ikey Moses is portrayed as an
unctuous pickpocket and small-time con man,
he even picks his hostess’s pocket during a
Christmas party.

20. "Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on
his back including a pair of fancy stays." (U9.628)
Sir Walter Raleigh’s dress was always
splendid, and he loved, like a Persian Shah
or Indian Rajah of our day, to cover himself
with the most precious jewels.

21. "Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed: -Blessed Margaret Mary
Anycock!" (U9.646)
Mulligan is irreverently referring to Margaret
Mary Alacoque (1647 - 1690), a French Nun of the
Visitation Order and Apostle of the Devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She was canonized by
Benedict XV in 1920. Her visions and teachings
have had considerable influence on the
devotional life of Catholics, especially since the
inauguration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus on the Roman calendar in 1856.
Represented as a nun in the Visitation habit
holding a flaming heart; or kneeling before Jesus,
who exposes (or hands) his Sacred Heart to her.
She is also mentioned in Dubliners. This card
predates 1920 since it is titled Bienheureuse =
Blessed, and not Saint.

22. "An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He
walks." (U9.652)
In The Winter’s Tale, in a “pastoral”
scene, Perkita, the heroine, gives
summer flowers as compliments to a
middle-aged lord and then wishes for
spring flowers to compliment a young
lord.

23. "Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.'
(U9.662)
Charenton is a town five
miles southeast of Paris at
the confluence of the Seine
and the Marne, famous as
the site of a key bridge over
the Marne and attendant
fortifications.

24. "Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and
quartering of the queen's leech Lopez, his jew's heart being plucked
forth while the sheeny was yet alive:" (U9.748)
Lee argues that the “inspiration” of
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta is only
incidental to the creation of
Shylock; rather, the real inspiration
was the “popular interest” aroused
by the trial in February 1594 and the
execution in Juno “of the Queen’s
Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez.”
Lopez was accused on slender
evidence of having accepted a bribe
from Spanish agents to poison the
queen and a renegade Spaniard.

25. "- Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair." (U9.773)
Ora pro nobis – Latin: “Pray for
us..”

26. "But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he
calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her
whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his
wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.
- Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.” (U9.788)
After the tenth of the Ten Commandments:
“Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife,
neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house,
his field, or his manservant, or his
maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing
that is thy neighbour’s.” (Deuteronomy 6:21)

27. "Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough
rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks
bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.
Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower." (U9.820)
In Two Essays on the Temnant (1896),
Eglinton describes the Remnant as those in
the present “who feel prompted to
perpetuate the onward impulse” of the
“great literary period” of the early
nineteenth century. He cites in particular
Goethe, Schiller, Wordsworth, and Shelley
and discusses at length Wordsworth’s
dominant contribution to that “onward
impulse.”

28. "In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it." (9.858)
Rue Monsieur le Prince
– In early-twentieth-
century Paris, a street in a
redlight district.

29. "- As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest
of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
Coriolanus." (U9.879)
Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s
mother . The forest of Arden
was both a real forest in
England and the idealized
pastoral-romantic setting of
As You Like It. Shakespeare
accepted the name Arden
from his principal source for
the play, Thomas Lodge’s
Rosalynde, Euphues’ Golden
Legacy.

30. "I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On. (U9.981)
Richard III, unhorsed, his army crushed by the
Tudors and their forces shouts in desperation:
“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
This in turn links with Esau, the older son of
Isaac, who sold his birthright to his younger
brother, Jacob, for “a mess of pottage.” Jacob,
encouraged and disguised by his mother,
deceives his blind and dying father and
receives the bless that was rightfully Esau’s as
firstborn son. “And Jacobb went near unto
Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The
voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the
hands of Esau. (Genesis 27:22)

31. "Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him."
(U9.1134)
Lee, Brandes, and Harris all
affirm the tradition that
Shakespeare was prosecuted,
whipped, and perhaps
imprisoned by Sir Thomas
Lucy for deer stealing.
Presumably Shakespeare fled
to London to escape Lucy’s
continued attacks. Tradition
also ascribes to Shakespeare a
ballad at Lucy’s expense; one
recurrent line in the ballad:
“Sing lowsie Lucy whatever
befalle it.”

32. "- The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did
you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient
mariner." (U9.1209)
The Wandering Jew – A legendary Jew doomed
to wander the earth until the Day of Judgment.
There are various Christian and pre-Christian
versions of the legend. According to one
traditional Christian account, when Jesus was
carrying his cross toward Calvary he paused to
rest and was struck and mocked by a Jew who
said: “Go, why dost thou tarry?” Jesus answered:
“I go, but thou shalt tarry till I return.” Thus the
Jew became undying, suffering at the end of each
century a sickness that rejuvenated him to the age
of thirty. His fate also transformed his entire
character; his cruelty became repentance, and he
became gifted with supernatural wisdom.